3 ms·

> Anyone have any ideas of innovations since say 1980 other than in semiconductor manufacturing? if you take a very reductive and somewhat pessimistic view, th

> Anyone have any ideas of innovations since say 1980 other than in semiconductor manufacturing? if you take a very reductive and somewhat pessimistic view, there have been very few true "innovations" in the history of mankind. the wright brothers' plane was just a scaled up kite with a motor and no tether. the first computer was just a sophisticated abacus (or Babbage's machine if you prefer). obviously the first plane was a huge stepwise advancement in tech and likewise for the first transistor computer. if you look at something like the internet today and consider how it's changed in twenty years, it's barely recognizable in capabilities. lithium ion batteries are vastly better than what was available for consumer devices a few decades ago, and you basically couldn't have mobile computing without them. we certainly allocate a ton of capital towards technologies of dubious value (eg, social media), but we are still in an era of unprecedented technological advancement. I suspect it's just harder to find the stepwise jumps when most of the foundations for current technology are pinned down and many people are making incremental progress in parallel.

rrss 7y ago
> if you look at something like the internet today and consider how it's changed in twenty years, it's barely recognizable in capabilities. I'm not a internet/web person, so forgive me, but: The internet today seems an awfully lot the same as the internet in 2000. In terms of 'unrecognizable capabilities,' are you thinking of streaming video or what? Batteries is a good one, thanks.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Wikipedia for instance only launched in 2001. Arxiv, Amazon, Uber, etc
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I'm not just talking about the experience of browsing websites, although to compare a typical website in 1999 vs in 2019 is a bit like comparing a model T to a Tesla (for better or for worse). I'm mainly talking about all the services that are available today though, not just serving static text with pretty markup. web search, video streaming, cloud storage, etc. were barely available (to consumers) or non-existent in 1999. I'm venturing out of my area of expertise here, but I believe sharding, cdns, and load balancing were also in their infancy then. big web companies would actually have their sites go down and have meaningful downtime. web services are much more resilient today than they were.

rrss 7y ago

> if you look at something like the internet today and consider how it's changed in twenty years, it's barely recognizable in capabilities. I'm not a internet/web person, so forgive me, but: The internet today seems an awfully lot the same as the internet in 2000. In terms of 'unrecognizable capabilities,' are you thinking of streaming video or what? Batteries is a good one, thanks.

lostmsu 7y ago
Wikipedia for instance only launched in 2001. Arxiv, Amazon, Uber, etc
leetcrew 7y ago
I'm not just talking about the experience of browsing websites, although to compare a typical website in 1999 vs in 2019 is a bit like comparing a model T to a Tesla (for better or for worse). I'm mainly talking about all the services that are available today though, not just serving static text with pretty markup. web search, video streaming, cloud storage, etc. were barely available (to consumers) or non-existent in 1999. I'm venturing out of my area of expertise here, but I believe sharding, cdns, and load balancing were also in their infancy then. big web companies would actually have their sites go down and have meaningful downtime. web services are much more resilient today than they were.